Stopping Terrorism -- How would You do it ?

So many threads re the handling of the Terror threat of Terrorists. I'm wondering what innovative ways there might be to reduce the threat to free Countries.

Can Terrorism be battled and defeated through means other than drastically increasing security within your own Country?

Easy.
We just need to make our governments, those who are elected to represent our countries and the people, stop messing around with the affairs of others. They need to do the job they are paid to do and spend less time looking at ways of ripping off poorer nations at the behest of big business and international banking concerns. The idea that they represent us all is laughable
Fair trade and the fair treatment of others goes a long way to making friends, rather than propping up oppressive dictators so that corporate interests are served.

let's open a secret suicide bomber school.I wonder how many idiot's would join.You must prove yourself worthy at graduation ,and go out with a bang.

I hear you, and that will do something for down-the-road affairs. But seems to me there's a terrorist threat wheel in motion now and I suppose that might be the area of importance at this moment.

How to stop the present threat now without spending billions on our own Countries securitiy for limited security results..

Dallas

I agree with the Britguy and Dallas to drastically increase security within our own country. We (the US) are a wide open mess! Worse than before 9/11.

Right now? We withdraw our troops from the Middle East. Let them run their own countries how they see fit. Let's just see if they 'hate us for our freedoms'

Change our consumption habits.
Pay what we should be paying for gas. You watch how many people find they can actually bike to work.
Make renewable energy a reality.
Make electric and solar autos a reality.

I don't think we can 'stop' terrorism completely, but I do think we can take away the impetus and protect ourselves form the stragglers. We could have a pre-9/11 country again or even better (all by our own actions!) but we're on the WAY wrong path for that. We're just adding tons of fuel to the raging terrorist bonfire.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
I agree with the Britguy and Dallas to drastically increase security within our own country. We (the US) are a wide open mess! Worse than before 9/11.

Right now? We withdraw our troops from the Middle East. Let them run their own countries how they see fit. Let's just see if they 'hate us for our freedoms'

Change our consumption habits.
Pay what we should be paying for gas. You watch how many people find they can actually bike to work.
Make renewable energy a reality.
Make electric and solar autos a reality.

I don't think we can 'stop' terrorism completely, but I do think we can take away the impetus and protect ourselves form the stragglers. We could have a pre-9/11 country again or even better (all by our own actions!) but we're on the WAY wrong path for that. We're just adding tons of fuel to the raging terrorist bonfire.

You are not living in reality.The US is on the forefront stopping the implementation of alternative technology fuel for cars, because their economy and especially the dollar is dependant on it and they are now are in the middle east on top of the oil..
You wont see any good alternative on the market untill the last drop of oil has been used been.

Maybe China will come up with something spectacular because they are the ones who are forced now to find an alternative asap now the americans are trying to control the most of the oil(syria,Iran)and so have control over Chinas economic growth.
B

To end terrorism we need to destroy the merits of Bin Laden's form of radical Islamic extremism. In order to do this we would need to accomplish the following:

1. Complete the Iraq restructuring and remove our forces. Therefore no longer occupying a fellow Muslim nation.
2. Same in Afghanistan.
3. Negotiate a shared ownership agreement of Jerusalem, perhaps through a new third party religious united nations or similar treaty.

At this point we would no longer be presenting a threat to the radicals as they claim today. As long as Israel retains ownership of Jerusalem they always have an excuse to attack us as the "infidel" is occupying the Holy Land. The Jews and the Muslims are going to have to learn to share this area with others due to it's substantial religious signifance to many parties.

If at that point we still had troubles with the organizations, we would have to continue to pursue them and hunt them down.

Having tight security at home is going to be something we will have to get used to in helping to prevent these types of attacks while these people still pose a threat.

Originally posted by Dallas

So many threads re the handling of the Terror threat of Terrorists.

Can Terrorism be battled and defeated through means other than drastically increasing security within your own Country?

you're right, lots of threads-lots of views...

being the right-brain person i am, i see terrorism & terrorists as a
frame-of-mind or idealogy.
and completely different from the Cells which use terror tactics,

which- in a mismanaged and error filled strategy of declaring a
WAR on Terror (& terrorists & terrorism & insurgents & jihadists...etc...)....
has entered into a no-win-situation, as the 'enemy' is an ideology or spirit.

a more focused approach, in which squads or platoons of 'cell nutralizers'
would find itself assigned to & involved with the liquidation/termination of
a specific 'terror cell'...the central intell or layers of intell coordinaters would
assign specialized teams to 'nutralize' those identified as ringleaders or
masterminds.
If, it becomes common knowledge that 'cells' are being terminated before
the terror act or Jihad can be successfully accomplished...then a certain
% of volunteers, recruits, will not elect to join in.
...my right-brain thinking rationalizes that there are maybe 2% of any idealogy that are so hard-core
that they are willing to die for what everyone else sees as a lost cause
or just a ideal, for extremists & zealots or whatever one might call them.

I did this post before. It wasn’t that successful. Why? It’s a wonderful idea for a post on these boards. The reason was, most people on these boards don’t want to put their ideas out there for scrutiny, they only want to scrutinize. My opinion from the results of my post is, that most people that stayed away from it were the haters, the anti USA crowd.

Another reason is, most people don’t know the answer and have no clue what they would do, but they certainly chime up when somebody else suggests something they don’t like. That’s why I consider people like this part of the problem. They are always first to shoot and idea down, but never suggest their own ideas.

In my professional life, I call those people: Fired.


Anyways, good post and I hope some of these people put up, if not I suggest they shut up



[edit on 21-8-2005 by skippytjc]

Originally posted by motionknight
You are not living in reality.

The question was "How would I stop terrorism"? Not "How do you think this is going to play out"?

Thread Title: Stopping Terrorism -- How would You do it ?

That's the question I answered. I am aware of the current movement in the US and around the world. But that wasn't the question. Trust me, I'm living in reality. I don't fool myself by thinking that my suggestions are going to happen, but that's what I would do. Alrighty?

In order to understand the politics and social problems that instigate terrorism you have to do homework and learn their history and what prompted the resentment that make us their enemy.

Can terrorism be stop?

Well, can you erase history?

Can you stop the conflicts between Israel and Palestine?

Every country send home each nations peoples.
If you cant mix with other people or cultures GO HOME.

Unfortunately it's up to our leaders, who have caused most of the ill feeling towards our western nations, to sort the terrorism situation out. So far they have created a boom for the military industrial complex, killed a lot of innocent people and our own service members but had little or no effect against terrorism.
There is also the question of who is behind terrorist acts against the west.
Who benefits? I trust my own government, the old boy network behind them and the intel units less than those we are supposed to blame.

So, what can we do? Absolutely nothing, short of rebellion against our own leaders and installing a non-partisan government, free from any ties to big corporate interests and with proper accountability and oversight.

I believe terrorism is a form of military cowardice. When military operations are carried out in, amongst, and against the civilian populations of a country, a spiral of hate and fear, and reprisals and escalations, inevitably ensues. When the opfor can blend seamlessly into the populace until they become, in effect, indistinguishable, standard military tactics become useless. Terrorists know this, and seek to bring military operations to their level, where there is little hope of decisive victory, except for the best terrorists, whichever side they are on.

Terror is the inevitable choice of those who face overwhelming odds against a conventional military force, with no hope of victory in conventional battle.

My solution would be to even the conventional battle odds. The best division of the opfor against our best division, with like equipment, no terror tactics allowed. Say, no air ops allowed. May the best fighters win, in the end, hand to hand. No civilians or noncombatants on the battlefield. This is a variation of the 'our champion takes on your champion' scenario. There would have to be agreed upon issues for the conflict to settle, and parties would have to be bound by the outcome. In short, it would take integrity and involve substantial risk on both sides of the conflict.

I don't think this would be a viable solution, though, because there isn't enough integrity and faith left in the world to support it. That era has long since passed, and doesn't seem to be coming around again anytime soon. Sherman's March to the Sea, the Rape of Nanking, and the fire-bombing of London, Dresden, and Tokyo have paved the way to the present day. Camelot has fallen. Chivalry is dead in Texas.

I've answered this same, or a similar, question in several other threads....

One regarding the War on Terror & Iraq is here (my second post down, I think):
www.abovetopsecret.com...

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I don't know what the appropriate course of action is to take at this point. I would say that the best we can do is examine the failure and poor judgment that has taken place to date and learn from it. Continuing to cheerlead this war and play up the "positive" aspects, if any, it has, will only serve to lengthen the time it takes before a new generation of Americans learn why the United States has never fared well in the unilateral nation building game. Not to mention the time it will take to change tactics in fighting the "war on terror" as a whole.

For the average American, all I can say one can do is:

1.) Don't vote for any politician who wishes to escalate a strategy of invading terror free nations in the hopes of turning them into "terrorist honey traps."

2.) Don't vote for any politician who wishes to pursue wars non-related to the war on terror at a time when we need to build international consensus and focus our resources on the main (ie, terroist) threat.

3.) Support our troops. The hawks have clearly learned nothing from Vietnam, but this doesn't mean the rest of us can't learn either. Don't vote for any politician who would reduce the benefits and medical care available for returning veterans, and remember that the military did it's job in Iraq with great skill.

For the policy makers, I have nothing original to say that hasn't been said to them already by the advisors they chose to ignore. To fight terror, we need a global consensus, and the problem has to be treated through negotiation and diplomatic channels, via extraditions and concerted efforts to locate and destroy terrorists. Not via unilateral wars which eat up all our resources and engender resistance to US policy, even when that policy may be "good." Iraq now poses a serious terrorist threat, but we shouldn't forget the other nations that did so before we turned Iraq into what it is today: North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, to name a few.

As for Iraq, dealing with the situation on a tactical level, like I said, I don't know... The only two options I can think of are escalation or "Vietnamization," both policies which clearly failed in the past. As an American, I would vote for the Vietnamization option, since this would get our troops out of harms way the fastest. As a global citizen, though, I realize that this leaves Iraq in a lurch. Perhaps a third way is to turn to the UN and international body, and redraw Iraq's borders, so the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis have autonomous regions. It's certainly not a perfect solution by a long shot, but then the nation of Iraq was an imperialist fiction to begin with, and it seems to have worked somewhat in the case of the former Yugoslavia. At the very least, we should be exploring this option.

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One regarding Iraq more specifically is at PTS, here (it contains some political vitriol, but it was at PTS originally):

politics.abovetopsecret.com...

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I would read my Intelligence Community reports, which would tell me clearly that there were no substantial links between al Qaeda and Iraq. I would then shift my attention to those regions that posed the largest threat, and devote the largest block of our resources, diplomatic, military and intelligence-related, towards assessing all possible ways of dealing with those regions. Saudi Arabia would be one, the source of most of the world's terror funding. And then Pakistan, Russia, and North Korea, all nations from which al Qaeda could much more easily purchase WMD material than Iraq.

EDIT: Rest deleted, go to PTS for the full thing.

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-koji K.

[edit on 21-8-2005 by koji_K]

The US is prolly one of the few countries that can have the privallage of saying even their allies hate them. Being an ally to the US means nothing, unless you follow the US idea of freedom, which is basically do what the US wants and says or they will screw you.

To end terrorism, the US first has to realise that it's way is it's way, and it may even not be the best way, but to stop bullying other nations and allow them to have their own version of freedom.

Next the US needs to pull it's troops out of the middle east ands top protecting Israel, who needs to start becoming answerable to the world for their attrocities.

The countries like the UK, US, Australia, need to learn the meaning of equality, and stop screwing over third world nations for cheap goods.

In truth, to end terrorism, the US needs to change from being a war economy, it needs these wars to keeps it's bankrupt economy looking as though it can pull through.

So, to end terrorism, the U.S. economy must go from being a 'war economy' that is falsely supporting a 'bankrupt economy' into, what?

What is the rest of the world going to do while we're at it? You know you guys can't get along for a second without us.

Seriously, you make valid points, in that it would be nice to level the playing field with the third world through sharing of technology and infrastructure, bring the troops home and let Israel stand on her own via unilateral withdrawal ala the Gaza Pullout, and end our efforts to direct the rest of the world on how to conduct its business.

Again, what will the rest of the world be doing while all of this is going on, living in peace and harmony? I sincerely doubt it.

What's needed is more recognition, at home and abroad, of the fact that the U.S is still the leader of the 'free world' (if there ever was one), like it or not, and we all need to clean up our act, end the terror on all sides, and come to the table together with the goal of resolving the issues that truly threaten all of mankind. You know, like terror, environmental disruption, famine, and disease. It would also be a good idea to work out a transfer from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources while we're at it.

The U.S., UK, and Australia need to take the lead together on reaching out to the rest of the world with a viable plan for the transition to a new paradigm of peace and prosperity through mutual respect and cooperation.

Is it possible? Can we do it? Or are we too morally and spiritually bankrupt to try?